It was almost perfect: Tim Bresnan snaffled his first Test wickets; James Anderson bowled with such wondrous skill that it was not heretical to include names such as Richard Hadlee or Bob Massie in the same sentence when trying to describe his ability to make the ball twist in the air towards the end of its flightpath; England romped to another massive victory.

But to top everything, Paul Collingwood, emergency keeper and pukka in his England cap and Matt Prior's lime-green gloves, caught out the most prolific batsman in world cricket. Shivnarine Chanderpaul edged another snaking delivery from Anderson and England's cheerful new stumper made no mistake.

Collingwood clearly enjoyed his fresh responsibilities even before that catch came along. We kept spotting him with a broad grin on his face. Every time he caught the ball he seemed to smile; very often this was followed by an appeal. He went about his business with the zest of an emergency goalkeeper or a prop forward invited to play at inside centre. "This keeping, it can't be that difficult, can it?"

Collingwood made a pretty good fist of it, which was helped by the absence of Graeme Swann from the attack since the off-spinner was not needed. A certain amount of pandemonium can result when the specialist wicketkeeper goes missing.

In Somerset they still talk of the one-day match at Taunton against Leicestershire in 1973 when Brian Close, not a man to be dwarfed by a fresh challenge, took over the wicketkeeping duties from an injured Jim Parks.

After a few problems, and a few more byes, Close decided to throw away the gloves and kept bare-handed – with no discernible improvement in the outcome. Somerset, in an invincible position, lost the match.

At Lord's in 1986, England used four keepers in the same Test against New Zealand. The regulations were not so binding in those days. So with Bruce French injured, first Bill Athey (who was in the team) kept, then Bob Taylor (who was in a hospitality box), then Bobby Parks (who was Hampshire's keeper). Nowadays, such extravagances are not permitted – otherwise we can be sure that Alec Stewart, in attendance with his media duties, would have answered his country's call.

There was the odd moment when Collingwood appeared to be out of his depth – and in the wrong place. Keeping to Anderson was not so far removed from keeping to a wrist spinner, who has the capacity to bowl a leg-spinner and a googly without any discernible change of action.

It was hard for all the West Indian batsmen to distinguish between Anderson's in-swinger and out-swinger. This also proved a trial for Collingwood especially when a left-hander was on strike. On one occasion, he was obviously expecting another out-swinger; Anderson delivered an in-swinger, which darted down the leg-side and the conservative estimate is that Collingwood was 10 feet adrift of where he needed to be to have a chance of preventing four byes.

It was, perhaps, the time to draw upon the wise words of Brian "Tonker" Taylor, Essex's sergeant-major keeper of the 60s and 70s, who did not take kindly to the likes of the mischievous Ray East sending the ball down the leg-side. "Raymond, see these gloves. Hit them."

Collingwood will remember his excursion into keeping with affection; he will not, however, be contemplating a career change. Like many of us who have marvelled at the glorious simplicity of the work and art of Taylor, French, Jack Russell or James Foster, Collingwood discovered that "this keeping is not quite as easy as it looks". With some relief it's back to backward point for him at Headingley on Thursday.